


In Pieces

by Trash



Category: Linkin Park
Genre: Angst, attempted suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-13
Updated: 2013-11-13
Packaged: 2018-01-01 09:48:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1043385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trash/pseuds/Trash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mike's depression leaves his friends at a loss. They're trying their best, but what happens when Mike takes matters into his own hands?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It’s Mike’s birthday party. The band called all his friends, his friends called their friends. Everyone is here for him, or the alcohol, but mostly for him. Mike himself, he can be found curled up on the bathroom floor. All in black he looks like nothing more than a dirty puddle.

He can’t stop crying. Somebody bangs on the door begging to be in and he just cries louder. In his head he can hear his mom, her voice cheerful, “Another year older,” She says, holding out his cake with lit candles. He’s seven so there are seven candles, all different colours, “Another year wiser! Make a wish, sweetie!”

In his head he’s seven and he’s at home and he’s blowing out the candles and wishing to be an astronaut or some other such childhood idol.

But then he’s back in the bathroom. He’s twenty two. And he can’t breathe.

Outside Brad is picking the lock. He’s become an expert at this, he reassures Chester who just keeps suggesting that somebody get him some coke. Coke, Chester says, will cool him off in no time.

Brad finally manages to get the door open and shuts it in Rob and Chester’s eager faces. He knows they mean well, but he doubts Mike wants to see anyone right now. He kneels down next to the dirty, sobbing, puddle which is his best friend and runs a hand through his hair.

“Detox is terrified. Should I send everybody home? Make him happy?”

Detox is Mike’s cat. Even though the landlord says there are no pets allowed, some people really need the company and Mike is one of them. His parents didn’t get it, but the doctors did when Brad sent him to the hospital. Depression, they said. Therapy, medication, we can help you.

But Mike’s theory is that taking pills breeds taking more pills. Be they legal or otherwise. Dropping acid with Chester usually helps him get out of these funks when he’s off his medication, but when Brad finds him later slumped in the closet with a knife saying “They’re coming through the walls. I need to…I have to…” he’s never best impressed.

“Mike please talk to me.”

He can barely breathe let alone speak. The whole place is too small for him. The room is closing in and the noise, the pulse of the people outside terrifies him.

“Detox…he just doesn’t like strangers. You know he doesn’t, Brad. You know how scared he gets.”

They both know this isn’t about the cat anymore.

“I know,” Brad says sadly, “I shouldn’t have invited so many people. But it’s your birthday! I thought it’d be okay today. I thought you’d have…”

“Taken my pills like a good little manic depressive, I get it.”

Mike knows Brad is probably rolling his eyes. He’s probably beyond fed up now. He’s just waiting for him to start stepping out on him, their friendship, the band. Maybe they’ll kick him out. After all, a band needs to practice, which is virtually impossible when one of the singers can’t get out of bed on a morning.

“We all love you, Mike.”

Shit. That’s what people say when they don’t know how to tell you they’re fed up with your bullshit. Your suicide attempts. Your calls at three in the morning because they voices in your head are keeping you awake.

“We just want to help.”

There is a bottle of Valium in the medicine cabinet. Lithium. Prozac. The list just goes-the-fuck-on. If only he’d take them he could go out and socialise, he could flirt shamelessly with Chester, he could dance and be happy.

“I want my cat.” He mumbles sadly, not even uncurling.

“I want you to get help, Mike. You need to tell your doctor about this.”

“There’s no point. They can’t save me. Nobody can save me.”

The bathroom door opens and Rob steps in timidly, arms full of a purring ball of fur. “He wouldn’t stop howling. It was heartbreaking.”

It’s hard to tell if he means the cat or Mike.

Mike sits up slowly, eyes bright red from crying for more than two hours solidly. Detox wriggles free from Rob’s arms and pounces on Mike, curling up in his lap. He bites the emcee’s fingers as if to say This is all your god damn fault, you and your rowdy fucking friends. Do they wash your hair whilst you sleep? Huh? Bet they don’t.

Brad opens his mouth to say something but Mike cuts him off.

“Leave me alone,” he whispers, “Please.”

“You’re not going to…”

“No, Brad. I’m not going to kill myself.” His glare could kill and Brad almost flinches. Rob backs out of the room quietly and waits for Brad to follow him. They close the door and it isn’t long until Mike locks it again.

He lies back down on the floor, cheek pressed to the cool tiles. He can feel the thump of the bass from the stereo. Music he doesn’t recognise or particularly like.

“When we’re famous,” Mike tells the cat, “It’ll be fine. When we’re famous I’ll be able to look in the mirror. I won’t get sad. I’ll be fine. And we’ll be happy.”

***

His mom wanted him to go to an Ivy League school. She kept saying “I just want you to be happy.” What she didn’t understand was that art school would be what made him happy. Brad made him confront her eventually and she sighed, disappointed.

“Fine,” she said, “You go but you’d better not expect me to pay your tuition fees when you get sick and drop out.”

He and Brad celebrated in the best way possible. Alcohol, sex. Then, later, hangovers and regret. On Brad’s part anyway. Mike was more than happy for their friendship to become something more. Brad, however, he was terrified.

Over the summer they grew closer and Mike, well he fell head first in love. He should have known it wouldn’t last.

By the time school rolled around he knew Brad was stepping out on him. He knew he was going to be alone soon. And just like that they broke up, and the sadness that Mike had kept at bay became overwhelming once more.

School sucked. Just like his mom had said it would. He didn’t fit in with anybody. He didn’t even fit in with the people who didn’t fit in. He ate lunch alone and studied alone and worked on his projects alone and then he came home alone.

Things just didn’t seem to be getting any better.

Then Brad said, let’s start a band.

***

The night after the party Mike wakes up in the bathroom with Detox asleep in his arms. He has no idea what time it is or how long he’s been in here and gets up with a groan. His head hurts from all the hours spent crying.

In the living room Brad and Dave are at work with black bags, filling them with the crap left over from Mike’s unwanted guests. They both look up, falter, then smile at him. The way you smile at a child. The way you smile at somebody who is senile.

When Brad went off the college he called Mike over during the first week to see his dorm room. “This is my room mate,” he said with a smile, “Dave.”

Mike didn’t know how to react. He’d never fitted in and he’d thought going to art school would be what he needed. He thought, amongst people with interests similar to his own, he’d make friends. But he felt as if he’d never stood out as much as he does now.

He’d made no friends. And he thought, stupidly, since he was having such a shitty time that Brad would be lonely and bored too. But no. He had friends. Good looking friends too. And it came as no surprise a month later when Brad just came out and said “We’re together, me and Dave.”

And Mike just stared blankly, “But he’s Christian.”

“So?”

“That’s pretty hypocritical.”

“You could always just be happy for me.”

“You could have just told me the truth you fucking asshole.”

They didn’t speak for weeks. Mike had thought Brad would care that he was upset. But by this time he had started to realise that he was just selfish. Still, he wouldn’t be the one to apologise.

“Morning,” he mumbles, heading for the kitchen.

Brad catches up with him and leans against the counter as he makes coffee, “How are you feeling?”

“Been better. You?”

“I’m great,” he smiles shyly.

Mike wants to vomit. Happy people generally make him do that. Mostly out of jealousy, really, but he’d never say that to anybody. “Oh. Any reason? Does cleaning my apartment really do it for you?”

Brad laughs and thumps him playfully before digging through Mike’s refrigerator, “Don’t you have any food?”

“Aren’t you going to tell me why you’re so happy?”

With his head still stuck in the fridge Brad mumbles something Mike can’t hear, has a feeling he doesn’t want to hear. But he asks again anyway.

Brad surfaces with a bottle of water in one hand and an apple in the other. He sighs deeply, “Mike…”

“What?”

“Dave proposed. To me. We’re going to…you know.”

He barely drank but he feels hung-over. He wants to go back to waking up on the bathroom floor, blissfully ignorant. He wants to go back to when this all started and not fall for Brad. He wants that out of his life, one less thing to be utterly miserable about.

“You’re going to get married?”

Brad can’t even meet his eyes.

“In a Church? Or in a Synagogue? Because either way I figure you’re going to hell.”

Brad looks up and frowns.

“You know, God isn’t very forgiving of us homos.”

“Jesus fucking Christ Mike why can’t you just be happy for me?”

Mike throws down his empty mug, watches it shatter at Brad’s feet, “You want me to be happy for you? When I can’t even be happy for my fucking self? Nine therapists have asked me why I can’t just be happy for the people around me, Brad, and nothing has changed. So what you’re engaged? Good for you. Good for you for getting out of a relationship with me before I dragged you down like I have everyone else. Good for you for getting out in time.”

Brad grabs him and slams him against the wall, “Do you hear yourself when you speak? You’re depressed not fucking dying. There are worse things in the world than this situation right here and now. Happiness,” Brad yells, “Is something you have to work at so fucking work at it.”

Mike, he’s heard this all before. Over years he’s been told that he’s the only one who can help himself. But he’s pretty sure that’s bullshit. How can anybody know if they’ve never felt like this before?

He simply nods, looks up at Brad who looks like he knows he’s said the wrong thing, and pushes him away, “Just go home. I can tidy the apartment.”

He walks away through the living room, stepping over the trash bags full of bottles and plastic cups and smiles weakly at Dave who hovers awkwardly, not sure what he should say.

Detox is curled up on the bottom of his bed when he enters his bedroom. He locks the door and waits until Brad and Dave leave before he curls up and cries. Depression is the loneliest thing in the world, and he doesn’t think he can do this anymore.

***

One pill, two pills, three pills, four.

Pink lithium, green and white Prozac, baby blue Valium.

Five pills, six pills, seven pills, floor.

It hurts, and as he heaves over the toilet bowl, black being the only colour he can see, Detox circles him mewling sadly.

Mike curls up near the toilet shaking, and the cat’s cries are all he hears as he slips into unconsciousness.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mike wakes up. Which wasn't part of the plan.

When he wakes up the first thing he sees is Brad asleep at his bedside and he wants to scream. He can’t even kill himself right. What a fucking failure.

Brad sits up suddenly and gasps, “Mikey!”

Mike’s head hurts like nothing he’s ever felt before and he closes his eyes, defeated. Brad looks at him sadly, takes his hand, “God I was so worried. They said you mightn’t wake up.”

“Why’d you save me, Brad?”

And just like that Brad’s warm hand is gone from his and he moves away, “You really have to ask? You’re really that fucking selfish?”

“Are they going to send me to a mental hospital?”

“I...why?”

“I want to go to a mental hospital. I need to.”

Brad shifts uneasily, “No you don’t, Mike.”

“Therapy doesn’t work. Medicine doesn’t work. I need to be fucking taken away.”

Brad, he’s pressing the call button desperately. The doctor who comes in takes Mike’s chart from the bottom of his bed and checks it carefully then checks all of the monitors. “How are you feeling Mike?”

“Like I’ve had my stomach pumped.” He doesn’t want to say helpless, or ask where the fuck he goes from here.

“We’re going to have to keep you here for observation. And your therapist would like to see you today if you’re feeling okay.”

“Stay here as in this bed? Or here as in the psyche ward.”

The doctor studies him carefully then says, “The latter. Something tells me you aren’t upset about that.”

He shakes his head. Maybe this is what he needs. Maybe he needs to be removed from society.

How dramatic.

Surely, though, the help he would get in a proper hospital would be better than hearing the same old happiness is a process, you have to work for it and having his friends beg with him to take his pills.

And, surely, he’d be able to get over the whole Dave-proposing-to-Brad thing a lot faster without them there being celebratory in his face.

***

“I don’t think you would benefit from being institutionalised, Michael.”

“Why the fuck not?”

“Why do you think it’s a good idea?”

Mike, he’s been over all of this before. He’s tried explaining that he thinks if he was locked away in McLean or any of those specialised hospitals that he might get better. Then again, he’s also tried explaining that he thinks being a junkie and going to rehab would make him better – he’d have getting sober to focus on.

“I just want things to change. I don’t want things to be like this.”

“Like what?”

Mike grits his teeth and points to himself, to the scars on his arms from years of self harm, to the bags under his eyes, “Like this. God damn it I need a fucking break from myself.”

“I think you should keep a journal. I think you should document your thoughts and feelings when you get home.”

“What do you mean ‘when’?”

A week in the psyche ward where there is no TV or books and he isn’t allowed to get Brad to bring his art stuff in because x-acto knives are dangerous and pencils are sharp. There is plastic cutlery and Crayola crayons which he uses to draw little coal black stick men hanging themselves with a wood brown rope and crying brick red tears.

Rob visits every day and tells him how Chester can never get off work during visiting hours so he’s quitting his job. He tells him he’s crashing on Mike’s couch so that Detox has some company.

“Did you know he has one blue eye and one green eye? That’s fucking cool man.”

Mike smiles tiredly. Rob’s energy makes him want to jump out of bed and be happy. It makes him want to laugh and get excited over cat’s eyes and tell stories animatedly about things that happened through the day.

But, instead, he sits on the bed with a box of crayons and draws them all playing on stage in front of a huge audience. He day dreams the way the doctors have told him he shouldn’t. Apparently he needs to get out of his head. But that’s hard, when everything around you is black and white.

***

Back at home things just go back to the way they were. The only difference is now he has a diary. And Rob, too, who has taken up permanent residence on his couch. He thinks maybe Brad set him up to it. Which pisses him off because he really doesn’t need a baby sitter.

Shame he doesn’t have the energy to get angry at anybody about it.

***

_In my dreams somebody is crying. It isn’t me, for once. Somebody else, somebody I know. Most times it’s my mom, crying and saying over and over how can you do this to me? The way she used to when I was a kid. I try to tell her how sorry I am, I try to say that I love her. I try to tell her that I’m dying here and I need her._

_Other times it’s Brad. Sometimes it’s Rob. And they’re both saying God we’re trying Mike, we’re trying and I’m just standing there. I’m not doing anything. I’m just watching them fall apart over me._

_Dave says he and Brad are spending some time apart whilst I get better. I threw up when he called to tell me, then cried in the bathroom for hours until Rob came and pulled me to my feet, helped me wash down my pills with a glass of water._

_Sometimes I think Rob only stays to look after my cat. Because he isn’t always upset the way the rest of my friends are. But then I realise that he’s just stronger than they are. He doesn’t feel helpless because he knows I don’t want things to be this way. I don’t think I’ve ever told Brad or Dave or Chester or Joe that._

_The pills make me feel better, they do. But the minute I stop taking them I’m falling again. Is this the way things are always going to be? Am I always going to be running on Lithium and Prozac and Xanax?_

_Am I always going to be a drugged up robot?_

***

Mike goes through the motions. Calls his family and apologises for not getting in touch sooner. Rob eavesdrops on long phone calls with his father about how everything is fine now, the band is really getting going and he’s happy.

After that he calls Dave and tells him “Fuck what I think,” he says “Go round to Brad’s place now and apologise.”

Then he calls Brad, who yells so loud that Rob can hear him from the other side of the room. And Mike, calm as can be from the Valium he took earlier, he just says, “Don’t you think I know I can’t have you? Dave is trying to keep us both happy. Don’t blame me for his decision not to see you.”

Brad says something. Mike sighs heavily and mumbles, “I called Dave. He’s on his way over,” then hangs up.

Chester comes over and they write lyrics in the kitchen over coffee and the cookies Rob and Mike baked the day before because the lithium made his hands shake so bad he said he needed something to do with them. Rob watches them both from the living room whilst he brushes Detox who purrs happily.

“He still loves you,” Rob tells the black ball of fur who looks at him expectantly, “He just needs to talk to other people now too.”

***

_The Prozac makes me restless and the Valium I take to combat this makes me depressed. So more Prozac. Or Lithium. Which makes me tremble until I just have to sit down._

_Detox hates me because every time I try to pick him up I have mental images of me living with my cat in twenty years time. Just me and him. And it makes me cry._

_How much better off am I really, now that I’m drugged up to my eyeballs._

***

Mike wakes up to Rob curled up on the couch again and drags him up, pulling him into the bedroom.

All he’d meant was for Rob to sleep comfortably in a warm bed for once.

But the sex they had instead wasn’t so bad.

***

_Getting over Brad is easier with Rob around. Maybe we’re not in love. Maybe we won’t spend the rest of our lives together, but we’re happy. I’m happy! Really truly happy with him around._

_I’ve dumped the Xanax and the Valium. I’m thinking of dumping the Prozac, too._

_I want to be in control of my life again. I don’t want to feel like a junkie._

***

Mike comes home from a day in the studio working on vocals with Chester to find Rob lounging in front of the TV with a tiny ginger kitten asleep on his stomach. The drummer brings a finger up to his lips to shush Mike before he says anything.

“Who is this?” He smiles, whispering.

“This,” Rob grins, “Is Opium. I figured Detox would need a friend when we started touring.”

“Touring?”

“Yeah,” Rob says, looking a bit confused, “Hybrid Theory is really getting going now. You and Chester, you guys are amazing on stage. We’re bound to get signed soon.”

Mike smiles, wishing he could be as optimistic. As much as he is a glass-half-empty kind of guy, he can’t deny that the prospect of touring excites him. Maybe getting out of his shit hole apartment in this shit hole neighbourhood is the key. Maybe he can be happy on the road.

“Opium,” he murmurs with a smirk, “nice name.”

“Well I couldn’t really call him something cute and fluffy like Socks could I? Detox would just laugh at him.”

“Cats can’t laugh.”

“You don’t know that.”

Mike giggles, in the girliest way he has ever giggled. Being off the drugs makes him feel light as air and he giggles, rests his head on Rob’s shoulder. Detox appears out of nowhere and leaps up onto his knee purring. He spares Opium a brief glance before looking up at Mike as if to say Okay so the newbie gets a petting, where’s my under-the-chin action? Huh?

“I saw your Prozac in the trash. Are we fighting the power?” Rob looks worried, even if he doesn’t sound it.

“Yeah. But it’s okay. I’m okay.”

And Rob smiles, leans in to kiss him softly, “That’s good. That’s great Mikey.”

***

_I’m not okay. I wish I wasn’t lying to him. But he’s so happy now. And it’s easy enough now, for some reason, to pretend I’m fine._

_But when he leaves the house I’m sure he won’t come back and it’s hard to breathe. But then he comes home, and things are okay again._

_He says he loves me._

_So I guess I can keep up this charade. Because his smile makes it worth it._

**Author's Note:**

> And now I’m sick of this I can’t stand the sandpaper thoughts that grade on my sanity. I'd rather not even be than the man that’s staring in the mirror through me.


End file.
